A little off-topic for a scramdisk group, but this seems to be the meetingplace for the PBA community at the moment.

I'm seeking comments re support of products such as DCPP and SafeBoot Solo.The reason is my helpdesk people are suffering an increasing number ofproblems caused by users messing up their Solo encrypted systems by doingsilly things, such as overwriting their rescue disks (or throwing them away)and trashing their MBR, repartitioning their hard disk (not supported withPBA installed), adding new hard disks, encrypting them, then trashing theoriginal drive and rescue disks etc... I wouldn't mind but the userstypically don't have a clue about PC's so it's especially hard to help themhelp themselves. .

All these things are beyond the scope of normal PBA products to cope with,my helpdesk has the regular task of telling users who don't know how to evenmake a boot disk to dismantle their pc, pack the drive in a proper transportcontainer, and ship it to us for analysis at £x per hour.

I'm at a crossroads now having to decide a) to put a high price on supportfor Solo, b) drop support for Solo, c) drop Solo completely, d) Give Soloaway, but offer only paid per-incident support.

If anyone from the user community would like to comment I'd love to hearfrom you.

Post by Simon HuntI'm at a crossroads now having to decide a) to put a high price on supportfor Solo, b) drop support for Solo, c) drop Solo completely, d) Give Soloaway, but offer only paid per-incident support.If anyone from the user community would like to comment I'd love to hearfrom you.Simon.

Please, please whatever you do, don't do (C) :)

(A) and (D) seem like the most viable option really. I think if youdrop support completely it will lead to people just giving up on thesoftware if they come across a problem that they feel they can'tresolve reasonably quickly. Mind you, that probably would make yourlife easier if that happened though :)

"I'm at a crossroads now having to decidea) to put a high price on support for Solo,b) drop support for Solo,c) drop Solo completely,d) Give Solo away, but offer only paid per-incident support."

As a registered user of the software I would suggest (A) since those of uswho paid for the product would be rightly pissed off if you discontinue itor its support completely or give it away for nothing to other users. Ifsomeone is stupid enough to install an encryption system on their diskwithout having a basic understanding of how the OS/MBR work then they shouldexpect to pay for technical support. You pour coffee into your monitor youpay for it, you trash your disk through stupidity you pay for it...Even withchoice A above, I think every user deserves free support for at least onecall/issue regarding the operation of the software itself.If it is determined that the problem is caused by the user and not thesoftware then slap a fee on it for further support. This will allow genuinebug reports / faults to be reported without expecting the user to pay forthe priviledge.

Just my two cents...

Post by Simon HuntAll,A little off-topic for a scramdisk group, but this seems to be the meetingplace for the PBA community at the moment.I'm seeking comments re support of products such as DCPP and SafeBoot Solo.The reason is my helpdesk people are suffering an increasing number ofproblems caused by users messing up their Solo encrypted systems by doingsilly things, such as overwriting their rescue disks (or throwing them away)and trashing their MBR, repartitioning their hard disk (not supported withPBA installed), adding new hard disks, encrypting them, then trashing theoriginal drive and rescue disks etc... I wouldn't mind but the userstypically don't have a clue about PC's so it's especially hard to help themhelp themselves. .All these things are beyond the scope of normal PBA products to cope with,my helpdesk has the regular task of telling users who don't know how to evenmake a boot disk to dismantle their pc, pack the drive in a proper transportcontainer, and ship it to us for analysis at £x per hour.I'm at a crossroads now having to decide a) to put a high price on supportfor Solo, b) drop support for Solo, c) drop Solo completely, d) Give Soloaway, but offer only paid per-incident support.If anyone from the user community would like to comment I'd love to hearfrom you.Simon.

Even with choice A above, I think every user deserves free support for at least onecall/issue regarding the operation of the software itself.If it is determined that the problem is caused by the user and not thesoftware then slap a fee on it for further support. This will allow genuinebug reports / faults to be reported without expecting the user to pay forthe priviledge.

IMO I also think this would be the best move forward. Most users willgrudge paying for support if it is a problem caused by the softwarewhereas if the problem is caused by the user then I don't really thinkthey can complain about paying for support.

Hopefully this would also encourage the more "non-technical" users tothink twice before playing around with potentially disastrousconsequences.

I should have said at the beginning that this won't affect currentregistered users, only future users.

I'm thinking there may be another option, which is a fixed price datarecovery service in the case that the user has messed with the MBR,partition layout etc. We can almost always get the data back given therecovery disk - in fact recently we decrypted someone's 200GB USB drivewhich they had somehow convinced their PC was a bios supported disk...

thanks for the positive attitude feedback though.

Simon.

Post by howamidifferentSimon,From your choices listed below"I'm at a crossroads now having to decidea) to put a high price on support for Solo,b) drop support for Solo,c) drop Solo completely,d) Give Solo away, but offer only paid per-incident support."As a registered user of the software I would suggest (A) since those of uswho paid for the product would be rightly pissed off if you discontinue itor its support completely or give it away for nothing to other users. Ifsomeone is stupid enough to install an encryption system on their diskwithout having a basic understanding of how the OS/MBR work then they shouldexpect to pay for technical support. You pour coffee into your monitor youpay for it, you trash your disk through stupidity you pay for it...Even withchoice A above, I think every user deserves free support for at least onecall/issue regarding the operation of the software itself.If it is determined that the problem is caused by the user and not thesoftware then slap a fee on it for further support. This will allow genuinebug reports / faults to be reported without expecting the user to pay forthe priviledge.Just my two cents...

Post by Simon HuntAll,A little off-topic for a scramdisk group, but this seems to be the meetingplace for the PBA community at the moment.I'm seeking comments re support of products such as DCPP and SafeBoot

Solo.

Post by Simon HuntThe reason is my helpdesk people are suffering an increasing number ofproblems caused by users messing up their Solo encrypted systems by doingsilly things, such as overwriting their rescue disks (or throwing them

away)

Post by Simon Huntand trashing their MBR, repartitioning their hard disk (not supported withPBA installed), adding new hard disks, encrypting them, then trashing theoriginal drive and rescue disks etc... I wouldn't mind but the userstypically don't have a clue about PC's so it's especially hard to help

them

Post by Simon Hunthelp themselves. .All these things are beyond the scope of normal PBA products to cope with,my helpdesk has the regular task of telling users who don't know how to

Post by Simon Huntcontainer, and ship it to us for analysis at £x per hour.I'm at a crossroads now having to decide a) to put a high price on supportfor Solo, b) drop support for Solo, c) drop Solo completely, d) Give Soloaway, but offer only paid per-incident support.If anyone from the user community would like to comment I'd love to hearfrom you.Simon.

Post by Simon HuntAll,A little off-topic for a scramdisk group, but this seems to be the meetingplace for the PBA community at the moment.I'm seeking comments re support of products such as DCPP and SafeBoot Solo.The reason is my helpdesk people are suffering an increasing number ofproblems caused by users messing up their Solo encrypted systems by doingsilly things, such as overwriting their rescue disks (or throwing them away)and trashing their MBR, repartitioning their hard disk (not supported with

<snivel snip>

Your software is a potential danger toa user's system whether newbie or expert.

Post by Simon HuntAll,A little off-topic for a scramdisk group, but this seems to be the meetingplace for the PBA community at the moment.I'm seeking comments re support of products such as DCPP and SafeBoot Solo.The reason is my helpdesk people are suffering an increasing number ofproblems caused by users messing up their Solo encrypted systems by doingsilly things, such as overwriting their rescue disks (or throwing them away)and trashing their MBR, repartitioning their hard disk (not supported with

Post by Simon HuntI'm at a crossroads now having to decide a) to put a high price onsupport for Solo, b) drop support for Solo, c) drop Solo completely,d) Give Solo away, but offer only paid per-incident support.

I'd say your only option now is to make it freeware + limited orno support. You probably know that there is a freeware productcalled Compusec and that it does more or less the same job asSafeBoot Solo. Hope this helps.

Post by Simon HuntAll,A little off-topic for a scramdisk group, but this seems to be the meetingplace for the PBA community at the moment.I'm seeking comments re support of products such as DCPP and SafeBoot Solo.The reason is my helpdesk people are suffering an increasing number ofproblems caused by users messing up their Solo encrypted systems by doingsilly things, such as overwriting their rescue disks (or throwing them away)and trashing their MBR, repartitioning their hard disk (not supported withPBA installed), adding new hard disks, encrypting them, then trashing theoriginal drive and rescue disks etc... I wouldn't mind but the userstypically don't have a clue about PC's so it's especially hard to help themhelp themselves. .All these things are beyond the scope of normal PBA products to cope with,my helpdesk has the regular task of telling users who don't know how to evenmake a boot disk to dismantle their pc, pack the drive in a proper transportcontainer, and ship it to us for analysis at £x per hour.I'm at a crossroads now having to decide a) to put a high price on supportfor Solo, b) drop support for Solo, c) drop Solo completely, d) Give Soloaway, but offer only paid per-incident support.If anyone from the user community would like to comment I'd love to hearfrom you.Simon.

You should have spent a lot of time thinking about this on thefront-end. When I saw your product announced, one of the first thingsthat came to my mind was that it would be a support nightmare. Therearen't that many software products that screw around with your MBR.Drive imaging, low-level software tools and OS installation are thefew things that do, and each can be fraught with peril. There's toomany things that can go wrong, and eventually... even with experiencedusers, they will. And when those types of things go wrong, they gohorribly wrong, taking out your entire file system. Recovery fromsomething like a hosed MBR is scary enough under normal circumstances,but coupling that with an encrypted drive makes the problem terriblycomplicated. The normal run-of-the-mill user (a FULL 98% of users)will have huge problems with this. So, you're targeting a verydangerous product to a public that only 2% can handle with ease.

You're not really answering the question or offering any constructiveinput are you?You are however apparently a troll.<sigh>

The question has no answer. The OP was asking for comments and I gavehim some, constructive or no. These gentlemen are in the business ofdistributing software, and should be prepared to deal with therealities. One of the first questions asked before beginningdistribution is "what are the support costs?". A cursory glance atthis product would have indicated a high number of support incidentsdue to it's complexity. I have no suggestion to offer that they couldnot think of themselves, and since I'm not familiar with theirbusiness model, I'm not in a position to make an intelligentrecommendation.

all I can say is you should have seen what we ORIGINALLY planned for Solo,online registration, secure hosted recovery key servers etc.. it was great(from a technical point of view)... Then we delayed the project for a year,dumped the "SafeNET" recovery service as we called it then and released Soloin the form it is now because we thought keeping it simple was best.

Remember, although you might think me bullish to say so, CBI never intended,or needed, to make a profit off of Solo as it stands now, and, as long as wedon't make a loss from it we're happy to leave it as it is. It's a marketingtoy for the company, and a pet project of mine. Before DIP, Solo was theonly product in the market and we give it away for acorns. Whereas SecurStarhas to make a profit out of DCPP etc, and are pouring revenue intodevelopment and new features, CBI would rather sell 60,000 copies ofSafeBoot Ent to the French school system. Ask Shaun H how long he thinks itwill be before 60,000 Joe-public users register DCPP... CBI and SecurStarhave completely different aims. I'm not belittling Shaun and Paul's stance -I really respect what they are trying to achieve, and I'm amazed in how wellthey are doing, but I don't think we are competing at the same level - if weare then maybe I should take more notice. :-)

The position I am in is sitting on the fence between Solo being a usefulproduct for the community and public, and Solo being as you rightly say toodangerous for the public at large - which is why I'm seeking peoplesopinion. Do I drop it to save the public, or keep it and put up with abusefrom customers who say "Well, SBS should have WARNED me when I startedel-cheepo drive repartitioner that it wasn't going to work..."

It is very difficult for me to give you constructive advice (inthe sense of being genuinely useful to your company and itsgoals). Even if it were a "wild success" Safeboot Solo couldlikely never be justified as contributing much to the bottomline.

Its value, if any, is in terms of "missionary marketing" -raising and broadening the general consciousness of thepublic. And, more narrowly, as a loss leader to get folks torecognize the value of your products at the personal level andthen recommend them at the corporate scale.

I am desperately eager to see SS continue - and so my judgment isclouded. So, although you must add a large grain of salt, here'smy recommendation:

While the benefits to your company are soft at best, continue SSfor the above reasons and for one more - as a "usabilitytestbed." After all, if you can make it as nearly as possibleidiot-proof for idiots, you will have learned much :-) (Idiotsare amazingly versatile and resourceful folks!)

Here's another angle. While SS can't be expected to make muchmoney on the upside, then, conversely, it is unlikely to cost allthat much on the downside - even with support for morons thrownin. View SS as roughly a nearly self-financing marketingcampaign - targeted at "brand awareness" rather than directsales of SS. Only if you thought - on balance - thatdisappointed users of SS (i.e., the morons who are black holesfor support) were damaging your corporate reputation more thansatisfied users were augmenting it, would I advise you to dropSS.

I'll announce our decision in the week of 12th Jan. Thanks to all in advancewho choose to contribute.

Merry Christmas!

Simon.

Post by nemo (nemo outis)It is very difficult for me to give you constructive advice (inthe sense of being genuinely useful to your company and itsgoals). Even if it were a "wild success" Safeboot Solo couldlikely never be justified as contributing much to the bottomline.Its value, if any, is in terms of "missionary marketing" -raising and broadening the general consciousness of thepublic. And, more narrowly, as a loss leader to get folks torecognize the value of your products at the personal level andthen recommend them at the corporate scale.I am desperately eager to see SS continue - and so my judgment isclouded. So, although you must add a large grain of salt, here'sWhile the benefits to your company are soft at best, continue SSfor the above reasons and for one more - as a "usabilitytestbed." After all, if you can make it as nearly as possibleidiot-proof for idiots, you will have learned much :-) (Idiotsare amazingly versatile and resourceful folks!)Here's another angle. While SS can't be expected to make muchmoney on the upside, then, conversely, it is unlikely to cost allthat much on the downside - even with support for morons thrownin. View SS as roughly a nearly self-financing marketingcampaign - targeted at "brand awareness" rather than directsales of SS. Only if you thought - on balance - thatdisappointed users of SS (i.e., the morons who are black holesfor support) were damaging your corporate reputation more thansatisfied users were augmenting it, would I advise you to dropSS.Regards,

Post by Simon HuntThe position I am in is sitting on the fence between Solo being a usefulproduct for the community and public, and Solo being as you rightly saytoo dangerous for the public at large - which is why I'm seeking peoplesopinion. Do I drop it to save the public, or keep it and put up with abusefrom customers who say "Well, SBS should have WARNED me when I startedel-cheepo drive repartitioner that it wasn't going to work..."

A huge pre-install infopage complete with a mandatory questionaire at thebottom forcing people to prove they've read the above, where such thingsare covered, should solve that :P

Joking aside, it doesn't seem impossible to inform people of a few "don'teven think about it" situations.

A few things working against this:

It's been a good whiles now since I installed SBS, so I can't be sure, butI don't seem to recall any major warnings prior to installation or initialencryption when it comes to harddrive reconfiguring while encrypted. Nomention of safeboot.fs in relation to defragging, something even many homeusers do at irregular intervals. Why would the average joe suspectdefragging, something he's been told for years is a great thing for hiscomputer, can break it after SBS is installed unless an exclusion is added?Yes, it's covered in the FAQ on the web, but most don't go there untilafter a problem's appeared. Same applies to other tools. Unless told, theyhave no way of knowing.

Peeking at the helpfile (for 4.1.1 which is what came with 4.1.3aapparently) there's numerous dead links in there and very little actualinformation.

One of the things the helpfile states is "Most importantly, SafeBoot Solocan be fixed or recovered if you forget your password or break yourcomputer, but only if you have a "Recovery Disk" - without it, your data islost. ". Based on this, a computer illiterate has no reason to thinkthere's any tool s/he could run that would make the machine difficult torecover. Of course, this is assuming the person even reads the helpfile.

My point being, unless very specifically told SBS needs to be taken intoaccount before making changes to a system, a non-geek has no way of knowingwhat not to do.

An alternative to making SBS free and supportless, might be free andcommunity supported. Either by opening a forum for it controlled by yourcompany, or directing users to an appropriate newsgroup or publicallycontrolled forum. You/your support staff could then poke their noses inwhen time permits to offer brief advice that those others in the know could"translate" into step-by-step procedures for the regular user if they sochoose. If an end-user has need of more than that, they're left no choicebut to pack up the drive and pay for the fixing, or format and start anew.No different than if they manage to muck up their store-bought PC for anyother reason.

Simon, please update us on the actual current status of Safeboot Solo.I am a registered owner and user of the program, and the last I heardwas that the company discontinued sales of SS. I just checked the website and I can find no mention of SS. But here you are talking aboutthe possibility of "drop Solo completely," which makes it sound as ifit's still available somewhere. So what's the story?

You also mention DCPP. That sounds like Drive Crypt Plus Pack, am Iright? I thought that was a whole different company. Or did somebodybuy somebody out?

Please fill us in.

Post by Simon HuntAll,A little off-topic for a scramdisk group, but this seems to be the meetingplace for the PBA community at the moment.I'm seeking comments re support of products such as DCPP and SafeBoot Solo.The reason is my helpdesk people are suffering an increasing number ofproblems caused by users messing up their Solo encrypted systems by doingsilly things, such as overwriting their rescue disks (or throwing them away)and trashing their MBR, repartitioning their hard disk (not supported withPBA installed), adding new hard disks, encrypting them, then trashing theoriginal drive and rescue disks etc... I wouldn't mind but the userstypically don't have a clue about PC's so it's especially hard to help themhelp themselves. .All these things are beyond the scope of normal PBA products to cope with,my helpdesk has the regular task of telling users who don't know how to evenmake a boot disk to dismantle their pc, pack the drive in a proper transportcontainer, and ship it to us for analysis at £x per hour.I'm at a crossroads now having to decide a) to put a high price on supportfor Solo, b) drop support for Solo, c) drop Solo completely, d) Give Soloaway, but offer only paid per-incident support.If anyone from the user community would like to comment I'd love to hearfrom you.Simon.

Using a new server that has years of retention (rather than weeks as Iwas used to) and so I replied to a message fro Dec. 2003 thinking itwas from December 2007.

Post by optionalSimon, please update us on the actual current status of Safeboot Solo.I am a registered owner and user of the program, and the last I heardwas that the company discontinued sales of SS. I just checked the website and I can find no mention of SS. But here you are talking aboutthe possibility of "drop Solo completely," which makes it sound as ifit's still available somewhere. So what's the story?You also mention DCPP. That sounds like Drive Crypt Plus Pack, am Iright? I thought that was a whole different company. Or did somebodybuy somebody out?Please fill us in.

Post by Simon HuntAll,A little off-topic for a scramdisk group, but this seems to be the meetingplace for the PBA community at the moment.I'm seeking comments re support of products such as DCPP and SafeBoot Solo.The reason is my helpdesk people are suffering an increasing number ofproblems caused by users messing up their Solo encrypted systems by doingsilly things, such as overwriting their rescue disks (or throwing them away)and trashing their MBR, repartitioning their hard disk (not supported withPBA installed), adding new hard disks, encrypting them, then trashing theoriginal drive and rescue disks etc... I wouldn't mind but the userstypically don't have a clue about PC's so it's especially hard to help themhelp themselves. .All these things are beyond the scope of normal PBA products to cope with,my helpdesk has the regular task of telling users who don't know how to evenmake a boot disk to dismantle their pc, pack the drive in a proper transportcontainer, and ship it to us for analysis at £x per hour.I'm at a crossroads now having to decide a) to put a high price on supportfor Solo, b) drop support for Solo, c) drop Solo completely, d) Give Soloaway, but offer only paid per-incident support.If anyone from the user community would like to comment I'd love to hearfrom you.Simon.

Yeah, that post was from 2003, so presumably they pulled SS early in2004. That makes it almost four years. But it still works with XP. Isuppose with Vista one will need to go with the new Truecrypt.

Yup, we pulled it in 2004, there's nothing to prevent it making acomeback though if there was a market for it. Personally I got tiredof getting flamed all the time so I doubt I have the stamina toresurect the project.

Yeah, that post was from 2003, so presumably they pulled SS early in2004. That makes it almost four years. But it still works with XP. Isuppose with Vista one will need to go with the new Truecrypt.

Yup, we pulled it in 2004, there's nothing to prevent it making acomeback though if there was a market for it. Personally I got tiredof getting flamed all the time so I doubt I have the stamina toresurect the project.

I think there always was a market for it. The only alternative,AFAIK, was Compusec, which I never tried, but which I heard was not sosimple and easy to set up.

But now with the new version of Truecrypt coming out things may bedifferent. If TC works well then I think a lot of the SS potentialcustomers will go with it.

As for the flaming you had to endure, that goes with the territory.You knew SS was a good product, and so did almost everybody else.Trolls are inevitable in a forum like Usenet. I think it isneccessary to not take it personally but to take it for what it reallyis: meaningless noise. Easier said than done, I know.